Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Making plans

I'm a planner. Chronic. Following through, I have gotten better at (perhaps as my guilt complex has developed), but starting off with grand intentions - that comes so very naturally! And so I tend to jump at the opportunity to embark on a new challenge or project. Last year I took up the 100 Days challenge, along with a whole lot of others - to complete some kind of creative or design-based task every day for 100 days (this link goes to the Facebook page).

Thinking up brilliant creative things to do.


The trick is: it has to be the same task. My sister in law wrote haiku, I did 'images of Louis' (and so started this blog, in fact), others altered car number plates to say funny/rude things, designed dresses, all sorts!

This year I am up for it again (surprise surprise) and will be writing a short script every day. These snippets of dialogue will, I hope, be entertaining, revealing, interesting or at least very very short.

Person 1 speaks
Person 2 speaks
Person 1 or 3 speaks

Or something like that. It will be hard for me to keep it to that. This is going to be a challenge in culling for me! My inner editor needs the work-out. Nanowrimo-ers will have heard of the inner editor - that's the little monster that sits in your brain, or on your shoulder, or on your keyboard, and makes you feel rubbish when you're writing a first draft... usually stopping the unsuspecting would-be-writer from getting very far at all. Actually, inner editors don't just kill off writers. Any creative venture looks like dinner to them.

They're not usually very nice.

But they do have their place and purpose: editing!

I am currently working on the draft of a new novel and I'd very much like for my inner editor to have something else to focus on. So, here you go you nasty little coughandsplutter: edit the faff off of these little hardly hatched morsels. They're nice and juicy and fresh from my brain/life.

Yes, I will definitely be drawing on conversations I hear around me and probably even some that I participate in. Living in France, of course, I don't understand so many of the conversations around me as I used to. So I won't be able to steal all my short scripts from eaves-dropping.

Yes, some of these little scripts will probably have a word or two in french. I used to really hate this: In novels, when writers use french for no good reason (story not set in france and no characters are french) as if everyone did high school (at least) french, and just assume we all understand. I would refuse to look up the translation, just to show them. Hah! (Yes, I'm aware the writer would never know and as I'm already reading the book at this point, they got their cut and probably don't care much.) So... I will include translations if/when I do delve into my new foreign vocab. Promise.

Timing, being what it is (and Murphy having his hand in things again), we are of course off on holiday the very day after this exciting creative venture begins. On Friday I will write my first 100 Days script, and also pack five days worth of gear for Louis and myself (and Luuk... we'll see) into one suitcase, and I have an ultrasound in the morning. On Saturday we're off at the crack of dawn to catch a train... to a train, to a train, to the South of France! Hopefully the weather will be so amazing I'll have difficulty finding any time when I'm far enough out of direct sunlight, and splashing water, that I'm able to put pen to paper, or finger to smartphone as the case may be.

The victims/beneficiaries of my creative ventures. 
(This is what they are doing while I finish this post.)

Orphaned by my writing, again.
Louis, in his special place, his reading spot - with all the junk mail, under the table. 
Sometimes a man needs to be alone. Good thing too... ah, the neglected child. 

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